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Many
of you may be familiar with a large coffee table book called
The Grammar of Ornament by Owen Jones. First published in
1856, the Grammar was the first text book on ornamental design
and design theory. It is a marvelous collection of designs
that cover a vast range of cultures and history, from the
Egyptians through modern time. The original Folio edition
has over 2,300 designs on 100 color plates. It was printed
using Chromolithography.
Direct
Imagination (Pasadena, CA) has taken the book and reproduced
it on CD ROM for use with computer graphics. They have used
Adobe's Acrobat software to create a 'click and choose' format
for the user, and Adobe's Acrobat Reader is included on the
CD ROM. There are two versions of the CD ROM collection; a
Compact version ($99.00) and a Professional version ($199.00).
In both versions, you have access to 2100 copyright-free images
and you can use a 'click and choose' approach to locate, view
and read about the images.
When
you first enter the 'grammar' part of the book, you can choose
to view the 'Index' where thumbnails of each of the eras of
history covered in the collection are presented to you. You
can move to the era of history of your choice by clicking
on the appropriate thumbnail. Once there, you may copy the
image to the clipboard (in the Compact edition), or click
on the link to Photoshop or Illustrator and automatically
move the image to your paint or illustration software (Professional
version). The Professional version includes additional files
(160) which are in vector .EPS format. for Illustrator or
Freehand. These will give professionals output that is non-jaggy.
In addition, the Professional version includes greyscale,
black/white and line art versions of all the vector files.
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